Mobile net use explodes

Norwegian software maker Opera Software said that mobile phone Internet access is exploding.

Opera said that, during 2008, use of its Mini browser on mobile phones more than tripled, reaching 5 billion page views in October.

The increase is especially marked in Southeast Asia and also showed spikes in Africa and the Middle East.

In Indonesia, user growth tripled. Page views there increased eight-fold and in the Philippines by 10-fold.

"In many of these Southeast Asian countries the mobile Web exists not because it complements existing means of access, but rather because it replaces them," Opera added.

Meanwhile Reuters also reported that fewer young Americans have Internet access than their peers in the Czech Republic, Canada, Macao and Britain, a survey of 13 countries around the world showed.

Among 12 to 14 year olds, 100 percent of British youth use the Internet, followed by Israel at 98 percent, the Czech Republic and Macao and 96 percent and Canada at 95 percent, according to the World Internet report by the Center for the Digital Future.

By contrast, only 88 percent of Americans of the same age had access, trailed by Hungary and Singapore, where more than seven in 10 young people use the Internet.

Separately, a bulletin by a software company showed mobile phone access to the Internet burgeoning outside the United States, especially in Southeast Asia.

For the report by the Center for the Digital Future, headed by Jeff Cole at the University of Southern California, researchers in 13 countries talked to more than 25,000 people in Asia, Australia, North and South America and Europe in late 2007 and early 2008.

The Center report showed the United States trails other countries in older groups, too. US Internet usage by those over 18 runs behind Sweden, New Zealand and Canada.

Recently, US Federal Communications Commission chairman Kevin Martin unsuccessfully proposed a universal service fund to promote high-speed Internet access, similar to the one for telephone service.

Martin also advocates new spectrum for wireless in the United States to facilitate Internet access and held a joint news conference with Larry Page, a founder of Google Inc., to promote the idea.